The drama that unfolded in the arrest and court proceedings of
Theodore Kaczynski deserves serious, even prayerful, reflection.
In part it focuses our attention on that most basic of all
communities, the family. While the media mostly treated this case
as a titillating show, those who see

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the family as the building block of community, indeed of
society itself, may find this tragedy holds crucial lessons for
all who relate to families that is, for all of us.

The contours of the case are well known. A strange, reclusive
loner leaves enough clues to his identity as the long-sought
Unabomber for his younger brother to suspect him and inform the
FBI. His arrest and the subsequent exhaustive search of his cabin
lead to trial preparations and eventually a surprise guilty plea.
In an incredible turnabout, the brother, David, together with
their mother, Wanda, appear in court to stand with Theodore and
plead for his life.

The cost to brother and mother of this support seems
incalculable. The opening scene in court finds David and Wanda
weeping side by side in the courtroom as brother and son Theodore
strides by ignoring their presence. He has had no contact with
David for 12 years or with Wanda for 16. That tableau of the
weeping mother and brother, which typifies the entire family
tragedy here, lends itself to some profound and, one would hope,
instructive questions about the vagaries of family life.

The most compelling of these questions is also the most
obvious: How could two siblings turn out so differently? The
responsible member of society, David, who had the moral courage
to expose his older brother, with the consent and backing of
their mother, came out of the same household as the weird,
anti-social killer, Theodore.

Was David somehow genetically disposed to place the good of
society ahead of family loyalty? And was Theodore programmed to
build and dispatch letter bombs that ultimately killed three
persons and injured 28 over a period of two decades?

That seems too simple an answera question of DNA, or
genetics, or some other form of responsibility transfer. The
brother who had enough moral sensitivity to forestall further
harm to innocent people at the hands of his blood relative acted
out of a personal integrity and conviction that cannot be
engineered. And the brother who for 20 years worked out schemes
to kill people in most impersonal and cowardly ways is at best a
severely disturbed individualand at worst a wicked human
being. We are responsible for our actions, with all of their
consequences, unless we are quite out of our minds.

(The answer to whether or not David should have gone to the
police about his brother seems obvious and not worth serious
debate. In stark biblical terms, we are our brothers and
sisters keepers, despite our excessive American
individualism. There seems no way anyone could have justified the
younger Kaczynskis avoiding his moral duty to defend a much
larger good than the protection of his brother.)

ANOTHER REFLECTION on the drama surrounding the Kaczynski
family centers on the mothers and brothers apparent
acceptance of Theodore and their efforts to save him. One could
imagine and understand Wanda and David withdrawing from the whole
sordid affair in which their son and brother had become enmeshed.
After all, they did what was required in reporting Theodore, and
he obviously wanted no part of them. They could have let the
system do its will.

However, these obviously straightforward and good people chose
to face the media frenzy. They were willing to put up with the
incessant barrage of cameras, reporters, and a gawking public as
they made their daily and very public appearance to support their
tragically errant family member and share his humiliation. That
support strikes me as heroism.

At the end of the day this mother and younger son will salvage
the family name and do an enormous service to this institution,
the family, which suffers such serious threats today. The name
"Kaczynski" will not finally connote
"murderer," "Unabomber," another in the
Charles Manson lineage. "Kaczynski" will also bring to
mind the names of Wanda and David who saved Theodore himself and
society from more of his predations, and stood by him in his hour
of disgrace. Its a wonderful lesson in holding together
rightful condemnation and familial tenderness, or, if you will,
tough love alongside reconciling love.

One can only pray that Theodore Kaczynski can in the end reach
for and grasp the salvation being proffered by his family.

JOE NANGLE, O.F.M., is executive director of Franciscan
Mission Service and a member of Assisi Community in Washington,
D.C.

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